Re: [Groff] german localisation

[Werner LEMBERG]

> now, after upgrading to groff 1.18.1 (same thing with 1.19) under MacOS 
> X (1.18.1 as part of OS upgrade), formatting goes into an endless loop 
> at 100% cpu when using this  old hpf-file.

This shouldn't happen.  Please provide an example.

> is this related to occurence of things like
> 
> \n{f"a1c}
>
> in the pattern block (I found a remark in the docu that braces are
> not allowd in the pattern block)?

Maybe, I don't know.

> I have no knowledge of tex whatsoever, 
> but I guess this are patterns containing german umlaut characters?

Basically yes.

> I replaced the old file by "dehyph[nt].tex" but without avail (these are 
> silently ignored (no hyphenation in the output)).

This is the correct behaviour.

> question: is there a canonical way to transform the original tex 
> hyphenation pattern files to groff compatible versions without knowing  
> how to do macro expansion and the like in the tex files?

No.  Most TeX pattern files can now be used as-is, but the German
patterns are an exception.

> is there a awk or perl script around to do so? or are groff
> compatible hyphenation pattern files (except for us english)
> somewhere around (I did'nt find any)?

It's quite easy, just use the following sed expressions within the
\patterns group:

  s/\n{\(.*\)}/\1/
  s/\c{.*}//
  s/"a/ä/
  s/"o/ö/
  s/"u/ü/
  s/\3/ß/

(actually, you can use it for the whole file, but it looks a bit
strange then\).


    Werner